Our new ministers appear to be moving towards a clear and obvious policy, of no official support for Islamism. But they face surprising resistance from the people supposed to carry out their wishes: the Civil Service.

There are, in Whitehall, a number of senior officials and paid ministerial advisers who are sympathisers of Islamism. One of them, Mohammed Abdul Aziz, is an honorary trustee of one of Britain’s most important Islamist-controlled institutions, the East London Mosque.
Mr Aziz wrote a paper – leaked to this newspaper – saying that the new administration should build closer ties with the East London Mosque. He recommended that ministers should consider appearing in public with Islamist organisations which promote «a message of divisiveness, expressing intolerance towards other communities in the UK». He said that officials should even deal privately with some organisations which may support «violent extremism in Britain».

Another leaked paper claimed that extreme Islamist groups such as al-Muhajiroun were not gateways to terrorism, but a «safety valve» for potential terrorists. Last week, a Home Office civil servant, Sabin Khan, was suspended after allegedly criticising the Home Secretary, Theresa May, for her «huge error of judgment» in banning an Islamist preacher, Zakir Naik. Miss Khan’s boss, Charles Farr, was allegedly «gutted and mortified» by the ban, too.
There is no suggestion that these officials are themselves revolutionaries, or that they support violence or terrorism. They believe that reaching out to non-violent Islamists reduces the security threat, and promotes broader community cohesion. This belief is fundamentally naïve and wrong.

At least 19 convicted British terrorists have links with al-Muhajiroun. Zakir Naik has said that «every Muslim should be a terrorist». The East London Mosque, though publicly condemning terrorism, has repeatedly hosted talks by Anwar al-Awlaki, a spiritual leader of al-Qaeda – the most recent of which was advertised with a poster showing New York under bombardment.

Islamism’s greater threat, though, is to community relations. Tomorrow, the East London Mosque is hosting Abdurraheem Green, who has stated that «democracy is antithetical to Islam». Even non-violent Islamists such as Green, the large majority, teach their followers to suspect, to reject or sometimes to despise the culture of this country – and to hold themselves apart from it. We, the taxpayers, are paying, as I write, for a number of Islamist schools in which a new generation is being raised to be much more radical than its parents.

The pity of it is that there is a highly successful model for quarantining extremism, sealing it off from respectable society. No civil servant would dream of talking to the BNP, or protesting if one of its speakers was denied an entry visa, or treating it as a legitimate representative of white people. Nobody would even think of funding, say, BNP schools. At the recent elections, the racists were routed. Islamism is the Muslim equivalent of the BNP. Like them, it shouldn’t be banned, or persecuted – just utterly shunned.